Leo Zulueta was born in 1952 in a naval hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.[1] He was born into a Roman Catholic Filipino American family.[4]
Zulueta spent his early years on the island of Oahu in Hawaii and in San Diego, California.[1] He attended San Diego State College in 1970, where he studied arts and crafts.[4]
During the 1970s he began to explore his interest in Bornean traditional tattooing.[4] In 1976 he met tattoo artist Don Ed Hardy, who encouraged him to become a tattooist.[1][5] Zulueta started tattooing professionally in 1981.[1]
Zulueta's style of neo-tribal tattooing has been influential to other tattoo artists.[6] In 1989, he was featured in the RE/Search publication Modern Primitives.[7] In 1992, Zulueta founded Black Wave Tattoo in Los Angeles, California, which he sold in 2000.[1] In 2007, he was featured on TLC's Tattoo Wars with his protégé Rory Keating.[3]
Zulueta currently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he operates Spiral Tattoo.[1]
